Friendly Showers

[Fittingly, my first post in more than two months is about a country I long since left. (For those who don't know, I'm now in El Salvador. On that note, and as you may have noticed, I've changed the title of the blog. I'm seeing what I can do about the URL.) I had planned to post something I wrote about another country I visited during my silence, Guatemala, but it's not showing up on my USB. Instead you get this odd thing. In any case, that post and others will be put up in coming days, either here or at a new site. No joke this time—I've already written them.]

It goes on all day. I go into a stationery store and bump my head on a sac of soccer balls hanging from the ceiling. I pass through a shopping zone and have to sift my way through embroidered smocks, soccer jerseys and jeans suspended over the sidewalk. I enter the market and all but gash my forehead on a low-mounted swath of sheet metal. Elsewhere in markets I nearly get garroted by the taut rope holding a vendor’s tarp. Walking the sidewalk, roof eaves threaten to raise goose eggs. Even at home I can’t catch a break; entering the kitchen requires bending over, same with the bathroom.

At just under six-feet-tall, I’m often too big for Mexico. It’s not that there are no men and women of that height, there are, but they are a towering minority. (And I suspect they all end up like my current host dad: with their shoulders perpetually turned in and down.) The rest of the population glides under the hazards of the tall. Heck, every morning they hang the clothes and tether those tarps that I now duck under. Yet, there is an exception. A curious exception.

In the three months into since I arrived in Mexico, I’ve covered some ground. I’ve visited eight Mexican states—Puebla, Guanajuato, Districto Federal, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Guerrero, Michoacán and, now, Chiapas—and spent the night in all but one of them. Naturally, I’ve used the bathrooms in each of those seven. In some cases, I’ve sampled a wide variety of facilities. And you know what? I can only remember one shower whose head was mounted below the top of mine. (These are the kinds of things I remember.)

I remember my first encounter: San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, 7:30 a.m. on November 22^nd. I entered the shower a cynic, closed to the possibilities of the water closet, carrying a lifetime of subconscious resentment for chest-spraying shower heads. I left an optimist, a spring in my step. After all, if Mexico can do it, why can’t we?

I’m not sure how this state of affairs developed, but I have a good guess. If it’s right, then the difference is rather ironic. I assume that water pressure in Mexico is generally weaker therefore shower heads are mounted to take advantage of gravity. In the U.S., thanks to our high water pressure, we have shower heads that pound our breasts with water. We’re the country of Tall & Large. We’ve produced Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O’Neal. Why can’t I shower standing up straight?